YouTube Search Encrypted ...

... but streaming video not encrypted. Hmmm ... could lead to a false sense of privacy.
From Martin Sauter ... Observation: Youtube Is Now HTTPS - But The Streams Are Not

When I watched a video on Youtube today I noticed that the page's URL was https://www.youtube.com.... Interesting, I thought, it's encrypted now! If the streams are encrytped too, that would have interesting implications for video caching and compression servers in some mobile networks as they would no longer be able to compress and scale videos.

So I ran a quick Wireshark trace to see if the streams themselves were encrypted, too. However, they were not. An interesting implication of this is that the user might get the impression that the session is secure. But as the videos are sent in the clear, it's actually not secure at all. From the outside, it is no longer possible to see what the user is searching for, but which videos are streamed are still visible and can be cached or modified or simply blocked.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Google and Khan Academy Team Up

From Harrison Weber … Google and Khan Academy Launch YouTube Contest:

Google has just announced that it is teaming up with Khan Academy for a new competition to find the next generation of “educational YouTube stars.” This news comes as interest in new forms of digitally-powered education rises, with services like edX, P2PU, Skillshare, Codecademy and Coursera growing rapidly.

Google and Khan Academy are looking for what they call the Next EDU Gurus: “10 super talented and engaging content creators” which Google and Khan Academy will support through training, promotion and a $1,000 B&H gift card for production equipment. And although the $1k isn’t that hefty a prize, the training and promotion that winners will receive makes it look like it’s definitely worth the effort.

Flip Your Classroom with the Help of TED

Brilliant! You can get to the site here.

From Nick DeSantis … New TED-Ed Site Turns YouTube Videos Into 'Flipped' Lessons:

TED has unveiled a new Web site that it hopes will solve this problem—by organizing educational videos and letting professors “flip” them to enhance their lectures.

The new Web site, unveiled today, lets professors turn TED’s educational videos—as well as any video on YouTube—into interactive lessons inspired by the “flipped” classroom model. The site’s introduction is the second phase of an education-focused effort called TED-Ed, which began last month when the group released a series of highly produced, animated videos on a new YouTube channel.

The TED-Ed site is both a portal for finding education videos and a tool for flipping them. On one page, videos are organized by themes, such as the pursuit of happiness and inventions that shaped history. Instructors who want to use videos that are directly related to the subjects they teach can visit another page, where videos are organized in more traditional categories such as the arts and health.

TED’s videos are displayed on lesson pages that include multiple-choice quizzes, open-ended questions, and links to more information about the material. Professors who don’t want to rely on the premade content can press a button to flip the videos and customize some of the questions. With each flipped video, professors receive a unique Web link that they can use to distribute the lesson to students and track their answers.

Convert YouTube To iPhone , WP7 or Android

Free Online YouTube To iPhone , WP7 and Android Converter:

File Wiggler , a free web based free file conversion service that allows you to quickly convert your media files to formats supported by different devices .

File Wiggler also supports video from YouTube , Metacafe , Google Video , Vimeo etc and also the supported audio formats for devices like iPhone (3GP, MXF), BlackBerry (AVI, VP8), Windows Phone 7 (MP4) , Android (MKV, H.263) and more …

What's Your Special Sauce?

or

How the Internet is Diminishing the Value of Higher Education

James Brewer with some thoughts that should be troubling to educators. Why I'm Not Majoring In Computer Science. This is something that has been on my mind for a few years. I ask educators - "What's your special sauce?" - meaning what do you do that makes coming to your class or taking your program valuable? If I can learn enough HTML from YouTube, why do I need to take a web development course? If the the Internet knows more about AJAX than my instructor, why do I need an instructor?

I consider hacking on cool software projects to be the most awesome thing in the world. With that said, you should know that I'm not a computer science major. In fact, I decided that I want to study applied mathematics during my time at university. Why? Well, to put it simply, I can teach myself computer science easier than I can teach myself math and I think math is absolutely fascinating.

Now, just so nobody gets the wrong idea, I'm not saying that majoring in computer science is a waste of time. On the contrary, I had always planned on majoring in CS, but after realizing that I also love math, I changed my mind. Computer science is a great subject with a lot of really cool applications, but so is math. The difference is that I consider math to be a lot more difficult to teach oneself.  

The Great Thing About Programming

The great thing about programming is that there is an overabundance of material available on the Internet that you can use to teach yourself anything you want to know. Also, programming languages and frameworks come with some of the best documentation that you could ask for. If you want to learn how to program, you can do so without ever leaving your computer screen.

Math, on the other hand, is more difficult to learn (at least in my opinion). Of course you can learn math via the Internet as well, but there just aren't as many resources. This lack of resources makes for quite the learning curve.  

...

Having a degree in computer science will teach you things that will be useful as a programmer, but simply having the degree won't make you any better or any worse than someone who doesn't.

YouTube Channels for Learning Linux

4 YouTube Channels Linux Enthusiasts Should Follow:

• The Linux Action Show
• This Week In Linux
• NixiePixel
• lockergnome

College Admissions - Social Media Profiles Hurt 38 Percent of Applicants

Admissions staff check Facebook profiles:

In the college application, you’re a teen-age saint who tutors the underprivileged and picks up trash in the park. Online, you’re a party guy or gal flashing gang signs and strewing beer cans.

College admissions officers are looking at applicants’ Facebook profiles, according to Kaplan’s 2010 College Admissions Survey. (Here’s an infographic.) They also check Twitter and YouTube. Sixty-two percent said social-media profiles usually help applicants get accepted; 38 percent said  online profiles hurt students’ chances.

Courtesy of: Schools.com

For Profs, YouTube Tops Twitter and Facebook

From a Babson study collecting responses from 1,920 faculty at various types of institutions.
News: To Profs, YouTube Tops Twitter:

Probing the uses of nine different types of social media among professors, the study found that professors consider YouTube the most useful tool by far -- for both teaching and non-classroom professional use. Nearly a third of respondents said they instructed students to watch online videos as homework, and about 73 percent said they thought YouTube videos were either somewhat or very valuable for classroom use, regardless of whether they use them currently.

Other Web 2.0 tools fared less well among the professors -- particularly the tools with the most currency in broader culture. Only 2 percent of the professors said they used Twitter in class, and another 2 percent said they used it for professional purposes outside the classroom. Slightly more said they could see at least some value in the microblogging site, but those long-sellers still amounted to less than a tenth of all respondents.

Facebook, too, is tapped in class or for homework assignments only rarely, even if many professors use the site for personal or professional networking. Faculty rate the site's long-term prospects in the classroom only slightly above Twitter's, with 15 percent submitting that it is at least somewhat valuable.

Many professors -- 53 percent and 46 percent, respectively -- think that Twitter and Facebook not only lack pedagogical value but in fact harm classroom learning. (They did not say why.)

How to Download a YouTube Video

This story is cross-posted on Web 2.0 Tools for Teaching

Every semester, we get questions from faculty regarding the use of YouTube videos in their classes. Faculty, whether they're teaching online or face-to-face, have become accustomed to integrating YouTube video in their instruction. Most often, faculty use the video to highlight or illustrate a particular point or to seed a discussion or point of instruction. Faculty have gotten fairly adroit at grabbing the embed code from YouTube and embedding a video in their online course or faculty web page. Likewise they have very little difficulty grabbing the link and sharing it with students, either online or in a powerpoint presentation.

The issue that we're asked about most frequently is "How do I download a YouTube video?" The reason faculty may want to download the videos are many and varied. Most often cited are a lack of or slow Internet connection where they'll be using the video, or a fear that content on YouTube may disappear from semester to semester. There are many techniques for downloading content from YouTube. Some are fairly cumbersome and require multiple steps. The technique we illustrate in the video below is one of the simplest we've been able to find. The key to this approach is the use of a bookmarklet (bookmark + applet), which looks no different than the bookmarks we've all been using for years, but provides a lot more functionality than a vanilla bookmark.

You can grab the bookmarklet and read the instructions for yourself at the Google Operating System blog. So without further delay, here's the video - once you've mastered this technique, feel free to download our video;)

Add YouTube Videos to PowerPoint 2007

Great plug-in for adding YouTube videos to your presentations.
YouTube Add-in for PowerPoint 2007 - Add YouTube Videos to PowerPoint 2007

Download the YouTube Video Add-in for PowerPoint 2007.

Extract the Add-in from the Zipped File

1. Double click on the newly saved zipped file.
   
2. Right click on the file named YouTubeVideo2k7.ppam.
   
3. Click on Copy
   
4. Navigate to the location on your computer where you wish to save the add-in file.
   
5. Paste the YouTubeVideo2k7.ppam file to this new location.

Now you are ready to move on to installing the Add-in.

Set Your Content Free!

Great story about a band that has benefited from their music being used in a YouTube video. This illustrates perfectly what all the big media companies have had great difficulty coming to grips with - getting your content out through multiple channels (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, etc) helps to build a following, rather than cannibalizing your audience. NBC learned the lesson with The Office on iTunes and MIT with their OpenWeb Initiative - in each case giving their content away increased their audience/applications. Click the link below to watch the video and a video of the band discussing the benefits.

Yet another band says thank you for pirating our song

Just last week I posted about the second largest aquarium in the world and how cool it was. Well it turns out that the song by Barcelona used in the video had been pirated. Now in this day and age of YouTube takedowns at the slightest finger wagging by record companies the guys in Barcelona are saying a great big thank you to the person who made the video. The band claims that the video has actually boosted their album sales and concert ticket sales.

So bucking the takedown trend the guys in the band posted a video response to the "Kuroshio Sea" video in which they thanked the uploader of the video and all their new-found friends that came as a result of the posting.

Now that’s the way to handle the times when a fan creates something really cool and actually adds value to your music. Good on ya Barcelona!

Using YouTube to Market a College

Here's another great video from Lake Superior Connect. Are any of your schools using YouTube to market like this? Watch more of their video on their YouTube channel.

Marc Andreessen on Charlie Rose

I worked from home on Friday and was able to catch this interview Marc Andreessen. If you didn't get a chance to watch, here the full video from Charlie Rose. This is really worth watching. Andreesen really has some great insights. In particular his thoughts on monetizing Facebook and YouTube. He observes that if you Facebook and YouTube wanted to make tons of money today, they could flip a switch and turn on traditional banner ads, but instead, both companies have adopted long-term growth strategies, rather than cash in in the short term. They are focused on building a business instead of making money. Andreesen says it much better - watch the video!

Prosumerism and Our Kids

More on YouTube money maker Michael Buckley and the evolution from consumer to prosumer and finally producer. Since I still have my day job and don't make any money from YouTube, blogging or podcasting, I guess that makes me barely a prosumer:) Maybe my kid and my students - all digital natives - will become producers! Grown Up Digital » YouTube Stars: when do prosumers turn into producers?

[sic] “prosumerism” - when consumers become actively involved in the creation of the goods and services they consume [sic] Back in October I wrote about a piece I was working on called Broadcasting yourself: How important is it to YouTube’s Success? One of the key findings of this research was that while YouTube’s tagline indicates the site’s popularity is driven by prosumers creating content for each other, the reality appears to be that “traditional media content” - snippets from TV programs, music videos, and the like - is far more important.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that prosumers aren’t an important part of the site. I got to thinking about this again when I read the recent NY Times piece YouTube Videos Pull in Real Money. It’s a story about how some of YouTube’s partners are now starting to make serious money from ads served on the original videos they create - with the feature story being about Michael Buckley, who has created his own celebrity chatter show.

Michael’s story looks like a classic case of prosumerism - he was an administrative assistant at a music production company who started producing a thrice-weekly (self described) “silly” show, after investing $2,000 in a camera, $6 on a piece of fabric for a backdrop, and bit more in a couple of lights. His silly show became quite popular after a full year of concerted effort, and he now receives an average of 200,000 views per video, while the most popular get millions. Now a funny thing has happened - he’s becoming so successful, and making so much money, he’s quit his other job and is now devoted to it full time.

So this leads to a simple question - is Michael a prosumer or not? I would personally argue that he was, but he isn’t anymore. After all, it’s now his full-time job - there is no fuzzy line. In turn, this brings an interesting dynamic to prosumerism on YouTube - as the business model sorts itself out on the site, it might not so much empower prosumers (because most aren’t popular enough to make an real money), but to allow the most popular prosumers to turn into full-time producers - a subtle but important difference.

Making Money on YouTube - What the Buck?

Time to grab the webcam and start your own YouTube channel. YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money

Making videos for YouTube — for three years a pastime for millions of Web surfers — is now a way to make a living.

One year after YouTube, the online video powerhouse, invited members to become “partners” and added advertising to their videos, the most successful users are earning six-figure incomes from the Web site. For some, like Michael Buckley, the self-taught host of a celebrity chatter show, filming funny videos is now a full-time job.

Mr. Buckley quit his day job in September after his online profits had greatly surpassed his salary as an administrative assistant for a music promotion company. His thrice-a-week online show “is silly,” he said, but it has helped him escape his credit-card debt.

How to Trim YouTube Video

A reader emailed me asking how I managed to "trim" the YouTube video I posted above. Actualy, I haven't trimmed it - what I've done is enter a starting and ending point. I've provided the code below for the untrimmed video and the trimmed video. Notice that in the embed code, I've inserted &start=204&end=228 after the YouTube url http://www.youtube.com/v/iGpIT2bVZDw. The 204 and 228 are seconds - so start at 3 minutes and 24 seconds and end at 3 minutes and 48 seconds. Not too bad!

Untrimmed

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/iGpIT2bVZDw&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iGpIT2bVZDw&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Trimmed

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/iGpIT2bVZDw&start=204&end=228" > <param value="true" name="allowFullScreen"> <embed allowfullscreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iGpIT2bVZDw&start=204&end=228" width="425" height="344"></embed> </object>

Does Your College Have a YouTube Channel?

This is a really brilliant use of YouTube by CSU. If your college isn't leveraging free resources like this you're probably at a competitive disadvantage. This is also a great opportunity to involve students from a variety of disciplines in building similar videos. Imagine students from art, communications, marketing, computer science - really any discipine - woking in teams to create 30-second marketing videos. Your college could even make it into a student competition, with campus recognition and college store gift certificates for the winning team. Here are the two 30-second videos - Attention High School Seniors!! and Time is Running Out - from CSU. Click here to watch more videos from CSU or subscribe to their YoyTube channel.

Wired Campus: YouTube Videos Warns Cal State U. Applicants That 'Time Is Running Out'

Application deadlines at many of the California State University’s 23 campuses have traditionally been loose. Students could apply in the fall, spring, and summer without fear of the campuses filling up.

But those days are over. If students don’t apply by November 30, they may not get in, Cal State officials warn in two new videos on YouTube.

...

Officials turned to YouTube as they scramble to get the word out to high-school seniors and to community-college students hoping to transfer. Cal State officials posted links to the videos on university Web sites and also asked communities, churches, and students to post the videos on their personal Web pages.

Wiki Textbook: Two's Company Three's a Crowdsource

Gordon Snyder and I have been toying with an idea like this for a few years. We even have an unpublished book that we were going to convert to a wiki and open up to collaborators. Unfortunately, that project has been put on the back burner. Our idea wasn't nearly as ambitious - 11 chapters and 11 authors. Nine-hundred twenty-six authors - WOW - how do you calculate the royalties? What's 1/926-th of 10%? I love that Wankel has used tools like LinkedIn and Facebook to build his community of authors. Read more about crowdsourcing here and consider picking up a copy of James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds. Really great idea- I wish I had thought of it ;) I also really love the phrase "...dinosaur books..." Wired Campus: Management Professor Uses 'Crowdsourcing' to Write Textbook

Management Professor Uses 'Crowdsourcing' to Write Textbook

Charles Wankel is gathering hundreds of co-authors from around the world to write his latest textbook — 926 of them in 90 countries, to be exact.

Mr. Wankel is an associate professor of management at St. John’s University, in New York. Each of his co-authors, most of whom are also management professors, will write or edit a small portion of the final text, which is slated to be published by Routledge. They’re organizing the vast effort using a wiki that lets participants see and edit each other’s contributions.

Mr. Wankel is essentially asking the expected audience for the book to be part of its production, since he hopes that management professors around the world will end up using the text in their courses. He found his co-authors by searching social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn for members who were management professors — and of course he invited colleagues he had met over the years. The practice has been called “crowdsourcing,” a term coined by a Wired magazine writer to describe outsourcing a project to a large group using collaborative Internet technologies.

The authors are practicing what they teach, too: The book’s title is Management Through Collaboration: Teaming in a Networked World.

Chapter editors and others who devote significant amounts of time to the project will get a cut of the royalties, says Mr. Wankel. And the hope is that authors will do more than just write — they’ll be asked to submit test questions, case studies, and even supplementary video clips. “If each of us does a YouTube video interview with a manager where we live in the language where we are, we’ll have a 1,000 of them in 90 countries,” says Mr. Wankel. “It’s this kind of thing that the dinosaur books can’t compete with.”

Here's more from the wiki:

The idea is that this book will be produced using an immense network of coauthors. The chapters will present text, examples, and exercises using networking in a globalized world as a prism through which the key management functions are refracted in telling, useful and important ways. This introductory management textbook is using a new authoring structure to create a high quality, cutting-edge, and well-researched book. The coauthors of this breakthrough endeavor number almost a thousand management educators and researchers in about ninety nations. The twenty-first century global virtual community creating this work is itself an interesting constellation of management phenomena that provides a wide range of exciting management experiences for its members to use as examples in their teaching and writing. More importantly, being part of such a diverse, constantly self-creating, mob of innovators is immense fun! It is our hope that our contributions from Tonga to Peru, from Iceland to Botswana, from Hawaii to Tunisia, from China to Grenada, will reflect our diversity and yet our communality in this increasingly connected world in ways that will engage and excite learners in all the nations of the world.

Video: The Process

Image via Wikipedia This video [via Communication Nation] answers the question - "What if there were no stop signs and a major corporation was charged with inventing one?" Very funny!

Google offers YouTube video software for Macs | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

Google offers YouTube video software for Macs | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone:

Google has released basic software called Vidnik that lets Mac OS X users record video with a Webcam or built-in camera, trim its length, add tags and a title, then upload it to YouTube.